computer history
Zotero’s code_swarm
I finally figured it all out, and got a working version of Zotero’s development on trunk for the past year in code_swarm.
Next, I need to find or make some cool electronic music to play while watching it.
Lego History and the Rosetta Stone of the future?
LEGOS
The lego minifig (the little human figure) is celebrating its 30 year birthday today. Yeah Lego! Gizmodo is running a contest for best picture or short film using the minifig. The first and second prizes are the best Lego sets of all time! My brothers and I got these sets as kids. So many memories
Yellow Castle Set
Galaxy Explorer Set
So many, many meomories come flooding back when I see these pictures. Most of the pieces of these sets are still at my parents’ house. Check out the videos on Gizmodo for a quick history of the world, told by Legos.
ROSETTA STONE
I heard through Slashdot about a project to create the ultimate Rosetta Stone of the future.
Rosetta Front
The disk will contain text inscribed in nickel, making it impervious to water and all but physical destruction. Written in eight languages, the disk contains over 15,000 documents. The only technology needed to view and decode this disk is a magnifying glass… with a magnification of at least 1000x. From the website…
The Disk surface shown here, meant to be a guide to the contents, is etched with a central image of the earth and a message written in eight major world languages: “Languages of the World: This is an archive of over 1,000 human languages assembled in the year 02002 C.E. Magnify 1,000 times to find over 15,000 pages of language documentation.” The text begins at eye-readable scale and spirals down to nano-scale. This tapered ring of languages is intended to maximize the number of people that will be able to read something immediately upon picking up the Disk, as well as implying the directions for using it—‘get a magnifier and there is more.’
Rosetta Top
On the reverse side of the disk from the globe graphic are 15,000 microetched pages of language documentation. Since each page is a physical rather than digital image, there is no platform or format dependency. Reading the Disk requires only optical magnification. Each page is .019 inches, or half a millimeter, across. This is about equal in width to 5 human hairs, and can be read with a 500X microscope (individual pages are clearly visible with 100X magnification).
The idea is to replicate this disk as many times as possible and distribute it to as many places as possible to ensure survival of knowledge if modern civilization were to be destroyed. You can put yourself on the waiting list to own one of these disks, for the relatively low price of $25,000.
I like to imagine if the civilization of today were to disapear and the people of the future were to grab hold of this disk, they would be able to learn how the world was at this time. I wonder, though, if the prevalence of information makes such a disk necessary. It’s hard for me to imagine that all of the data in the plethora of different formats (print, digital, textile, etc) will be destroyed. I do, however, wonder how digital media (text, image, video, etc) will be available in the future. We can already see the trouble of getting data from older media formats like laser disk and 5-inch floppy disks. If the data is properly brought forward with technology (ie. nowadays the best storage media is hard drives, particularly external drives attachable via USB or FireWire) it should always be accessible.
WTTGG #4
This week is much more historical…
Goodies #1: Traveler IQ Challenge - Test your knowledge of geography as it is today not 100 years ago (there’s the history tie-in). I’m not so good. I can’t get past the 6 level…
Goodies #2: New York Divided - This one is all about history. It’s even from the History Channel. It’s an amazingly beautiful animation about New York’s ties with slavery. Very well done.
Goodies #3: Randomwocky - You’ve all heard the poem Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll, and know of the many made up words. I thought it would be fun to re-create the poem using randomly generated consonant-vowel-consonant groupings. It makes the poem even more nonsensical in places, but some of the ‘new’ words are funny!
WTTGG #3
I almost forgot for this week, but found some stuff today, so here goes….
And a small disclaimer, or explanation first. Instead of just making this a list of cool stuff out there, I’m going to try to tie it into the field of history or academia. That will get me to think a bit more and hopefully stay true to my desires to have this blog about history and new media.
So… First off we have a couple of gadgets, of the software kind:
Gadget #1: Paintbrush. [Mac only] Have you ever wanted to just make a quick drawing or picture in Mac. It’s not that easy without Paintbrush. It gives Mac users a semblance of Microsoft Paint. Now, what’s the application to history, et al.? Ummm… I don’t know either. I’ll get a strike for this one…
Gadget #2: Skitch.com This is a new service that allows you to quickly take an image and annotate, draw, and share. You can grab photos from your iPhoto library, take screen shots, or import images. When you’re done drawing and such, you can upload it to your own account on skitch.com and share your photos. Check out my test photo at http://skitch.com/mossiso/ This might come in handy as another way for historians to share photos and their ideas. A teacher could upload some images and draw specific things… yeah, it’s a stretch too.
Tip #1: US National Archives Research Online and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. OK, OK, here’s a real tip for the historians. I’ve been looking for some information on the “Quarz” project started by the Nazis in late 1944. There is supposedly some photos at the National Archives, but I haven’t found them yet. I was tipped off to this topic by a friend and co-PhD student at GMU who works at USHMM. She knew of some nice had drawn maps that relate to project Quarz. So I took some digital copies of these maps, and want to use them in a project this semester. The above linked resources help in searching for documents, images, etc.
Well, the tips, tricks, gadgets and goodies were a bit lacking this week. Enjoy what you can of it.
Weekly Tips, Tricks, Gadgets, and Goodies #1
I think I’ll try and start a weekly tips, tricks, gadgets and goodies post. It will cover the neat-o things in the tech world that I come across during the week that don’t have a whole lot to do with history, but are fun nay-the-less.
Tip #1: Custom Leopard stacks and drawer images
Tutorial for customizing your stacks icons.
make a new folder, name it “0000″ for sorting by name, or “touch -mt 2020010101 foldername” for sorting by date added.
copy the image from Get Info, paste int onto the Get Info for the new folder.
Add your own image to your drawer using the steps shown here at usingmac.com.
And you get something like above.
Goody #1: Geotag your photos
Check out the Geotag application which is helpful for spatially locating your great photographs when your camera has no GPS built in.